Bombers strike across Baghdad, killing 35

BAGHDAD, Aug 1 (Reuters) Car bombs killed 35 people across Baghdad today, including one attack in which a suicide bomber killed 20 people and set a score of vehicles ablaze, police said.

The spate of bombings followed a relative lull in violence in the capital that some have attributed to the increased presence of US and Iraqi troops on the streets as they seek to curb sectarian violence between Shi'ite, and Sunni Arabs.

Twenty people were killed and 40 wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a popular ice cream parlour in a bustling commerical area full of electronics stores in Baghdad's central Karrada district.

Police said the blast set a number of cars ablaze and damaged several shops.

Witnesses said the bomber had cut across a grass bank in attempt to attack a petrol station where scores of motorists were queueing for petrol, but his vehicle exploded before he could reach his target.

A furious man was seen kicking the burnt trunk of the suicide bomber. People, mainly women, were crying in the street.

''You see all this damage, all this blood, in one hour they will clear it up and that will be it. When will this be stopped?'' asked one man, surveying the carnage.

A second suicide bomber, driving a fuel truck that police said was packed with explosives, rammed a line of motorists waiting to fill up at a fuel station in western Mansour district, killing 12 people and wounding 20.

In southern Baghdad, a parked car bomb exploded, killing three people and wounding five in Doura district, police said.

US and Iraqi forces have stepped up security operations in Baghdad since mid-February in an attempt to stem bombings, many of them blamed on al Qaeda, the Sunni Islamist group that US officials say is trying to spark a full-scale civil war in Iraq.

Operations have also been expanded in other parts of the country after Washington sent an extra 30,000 troops in an attempt to buy time for the Iraqi government to meet a series of political benchmarks aimed at promoting national reconciliation.

REUTERS RN VV1734